In Will-n-testament, Olia Lialina feigns her own death by publishing her last wishes on-line, designating her Web artworks as her most precious possessions and willing them to family members and friends. This simulated death gives the work a serious tone, and the official aspect of the will lends importance to this unusual legacy. As Rachel Greene writes, "framed by the language of property, debt, and transaction, Will-n-testament suggests that Internet art objects are not just prized and dear possessions, but that they have market value."[1] Olia Lialina is already known, by many, for her commitment to the recognition of Web art: she is the founder of Teleportacia, the first net.art gallery, and has seized various opportunities to promote the value of this art form.

In this sense, the work functions as the expression of Olia Lialina's wish, will, and intent to have this recognition come about in the immediate future, by artificially precipitating the moment of the will's execution. But is it necessary to die, if only virtually, to gain recognition for one's practice? By this reference to works gaining in value posthumously (evoking the romantic, but all-too-frequent instances of great artists who never knew glory during their lives), Olia Lialina again reveals her predilection for tragedy and black humour this time using this radical means to affirm the importance of Web art, with a full consciousness of the value of her own work[2]...

More than anything else, and with cruel certainty, death brings out our irreplaceable individuality. Thus, Olia Lialina's will and testament is also an opportunity for her to take a retrospective glance at herself; it is a kind of autobiography in which each work represents a moment of her creative development. In the form of a compilation, Will-n-testament gives the visitor the impression of knowing the artist's life on the Web thoroughly, from "a to z," thanks to the Web's accumulating and structuring capacities.

It is said that art is immortal and that artists are perpetuated by their material and intellectual production, surviving in and through their works; certainly, this idea underlies Will-n-testament. In a will, the act of dispossession leads to a pairing activity between the objects of value and the people to whom they are destined, so that each individual's identity is defined in relation to the identities of the others the story of one becomes the story of the others as well. This is precisely what the work conveys: that continuity of the self, is achieved by means of and together with others...especially in Internet art, because the medium relies on connectivity and on the formation of common interest groups therefore, on the absolute necessity of the other. In this sense, Will-n-testament affirms that the Web is a territory where destinies converge.

[1] Rachel Greene, Some of My Favourite Web Sites Are Art, http://www.alberta.com/unfamiliarart/[return]
[2] «In spite of all the conventions that bind him, the testator expresses (...) consciousness of his being, responsability for his destiny, his right and duty to dispose of himself, of his soul, his body, his possessions, the importance given to his last wishes.», Philippe Ariès, L'homme devant la mort, Paris, Seuil, p. 199.[return]